


Castle in the Sky

by NineMagicks



Series: Merry-go-round of Life [2]
Category: Carry On Series - Rainbow Rowell
Genre: Alternate Universe - Howl's Moving Castle Fusion, Curses, Flying, Kissing, M/M, Magic, POV Simon Snow, Sequel, Stars, Stay away from the cliff's edge dear reader, Unruly celestial beings, Unsolicited chimney hauntings, Wizards
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-11
Updated: 2021-01-11
Packaged: 2021-03-15 17:20:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,722
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28692357
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NineMagicks/pseuds/NineMagicks
Summary: Sequel scene taking place afterYou Who Swallowed a Falling Star.A year has passed since Simon Snow first stumbled upon a moving castle, and the adventure awaiting within. Since then he's learnt many things — least of all that if you run from your own story, it's only going to track you down all the more determinedly. (Stories are tricky like that.) Today he's standing at a cliff's edge, far to the north in a land he doesn't know, watching the waves and letting salt kiss his skin. There's a reason he's out here leaning into the sky, with the wind at his back and a wizard waiting for him to come down — Simon's got an important job to do. He's here to bring about an ending for another who deserves one. (And yes, he needs to stretch his wings.)
Relationships: Tyrannus Basilton "Baz" Pitch/Simon Snow
Series: Merry-go-round of Life [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2100321
Comments: 14
Kudos: 89





	Castle in the Sky

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Caitybug](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Caitybug/gifts).



> **** This fic follows on from[You who swallowed a falling star](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22668601/chapters/54180985), please read that story first so that this one can make sense. :)****
> 
> This is an epilogue about endings, clouds, dragon-flight and shooting stars. It's a birthday present for Caitybug, who deserves the very best day imaginable. Caity, I hope you like this little glimpse into what comes next. The title is a double homage — _Laputa: Castle in the Sky_ is another lovely Studio Ghibli film, and _Castle in the Air_ is the sequel novel to _Howl's Moving Castle_ , by Diana Wynne Jones. This fic bears no resemblance to either work, other than being lovingly named after them. <3 Thank you to arcanine for beta reading, and all the encouragement.
> 
> If you liked the first story, I hope you'll enjoy returning to this world, even if only for a brief time. Thank you endlessly for reading.

It feels good to fly.

There was a time when I thought I’d never be in the sky again. When my wings hung in tatters around me, remnants of a memory I’d fight to leave behind.

But...I _do_ fly. Sometimes. Stretching, spinning, soaring. Magic stitches my wings together with thread and best intentions, and they’ve held up so far. They’ve taken me further than I ever thought I’d go.

I move faster and climb higher, gaining precious inches. There’s no design to it, no destination in mind — just air beneath and within me, removing me from the world.

It’s the freest thing, and also the most fleeting — I go up, but I always come down.

Finally, past the first bank of clouds and where the air feels thinner, I find what I’m looking for — a shard of light like quicksilver, sparking bright against grey gossamer. (Sorry for all the airy descriptions. I think the altitude’s getting to me.)

I pull a glass vial from inside my shirt and remove the cork with my teeth, capturing a whispering glint of cloud. _This better be what he wants. Honestly, why can’t he gather his ingredients at a marketplace like a sensible person?_

As I replace the cork, a shudder grips my wings.

_That’s not good._

It means the magic’s wearing off too soon.

_Oh, bollocking hell. His majesty won’t be pleased._

I get hours, sometimes. Other days it’s only minutes.

Another shudder grips me, and then there’s just time enough left to sigh; I kiss the clouds as I descend, looping in lazy spirals towards the ground.

_The up and the down. How it should be, I suppose. I’m not going to get far in life if I start taking gravity too personally._

“Snow!” another shade of silver calls, pacing impatiently on the cliffs. There he is, my charming wizard — dressed in grey to match the quest he gave me. "Is the altitude addling your brain? Don’t tell me you got lost on your way to the _clouds._ It’s a simple enough route to follow — up, and up again!”

I _was_ lost, before all this. But not anymore.

_I’ll suffer the downs as long as the road leads me here. To him, to home._

_I could go as far as the wind would take me, and I wouldn’t need a map to find my way back._

Baz is standing on the cliff’s edge, silver clinging to the ends of his hair. (I love it. It’s a good look.) He goes through phases with colours — sometimes he’s draped in pastel, other days are louder than the sun. This week it’s mostly monochrome — he says he’d hate to overshadow the sea. As if he isn’t aware that in a treasure trove of rare gems, he’d still shine brightest.

Even though it’s _his_ magic that makes me fly these days, and not a wrinkly wraith’s curse, he doesn’t trust the spells to keep me airborne. Not entirely. He thinks if he’s not nearby watching, something bad will happen. The wings will unravel and I’ll be left without a chance.

He thinks I’ll fall.

I don’t mind leaving the sky behind, when Baz’s grey eyes are waiting below to greet me. (The frown I could do without, but it’s part of his face, so. I’ll make do.)

“Hello, darling,” I breathe, crashing into him. He doesn’t fall over; he’s far too graceful for that. (I’m _not_ too graceful and I _do_ fall. Arse over tit and tail over wings.) “I’ve got a high quality bit of cloud for you. Emphasis on the _high._ ”

Once I’ve pulled myself up, I receive the full judgmental power of his eyebrow. My tail wilts pathetically into the grass. (Coward.) It digs around in my shirt for the glass vial of silver, holding it out to him in apologetic fashion.

“Very good, Snow,” he says, examining it from all angles. “This will do nicely in my new shampoo blend: _a hush of heaven’s heights.”_

I smile, because I give a shit about this sort of thing now. Baz and his potions, Baz and his endless moisturising routines. “It’ll really bring out the shine.”

“Quite,” he says, grimacing. He’s almost content. _Almost._

“What’s that face for?” I ask, mimicking his scowl. “You look like you’ve been slapped with something damp and unappealing.”

“The spell,” he mutters. He’s pouting — I keep telling him he’ll get wrinkles, but it doesn’t win me any bonus relationship points. “The magic wore off; how disappointing. I thought we’d found a good balance.” He walks a circle around me, lifting my wings to examine them. The magic’s peeling away, leaving them in their usual patchy state — he watches the waves through the holes that appear, salt kissed by the wind.

They didn’t used to be this way, my wings. They were red and bold and unbending.

But that’s the thing about magic, I’ve learnt. As much as it makes, it also takes away. If you’re not careful, you’ll be bones by the wayside.

Unless you happen to have a handsome wizard to stitch you back together, that is. (Another thing to add to the long list of things Baz is annoyingly good at: metaphorical sewing.)

I don’t know what I would have done without him, after last year. Fulfilled my destiny as a carnival curiosity, or locked myself in my room for all eternity.

I sigh, shaking the last of the failed magic from my shoulders.

_Last year is done._

_I’ve got one more Very Important Thing to do today, and it’s going to go well._

“Baz, I’m fine. Your spell was great — better than yesterday’s. I went really high, so maybe it faded faster. And isn’t it good if the magic wears off? You’ll be the first to complain if I start composing sonnets in bed again. Hey, do you remember when I compared your lips to —”

“ _Snow_. If you’ve taken a turn for the lyrical, I am _not_ above pushing you off this cliff.”

“...or that wild night a month ago, when I improvised an ode to the inside of your —”

“ _Snow!”_

He’s scowling, but I can see pink in his cheeks. (So he’s not _that_ angry. Or maybe he’s _really_ fucking angry — I’m not that great at reading people.)

Fact: Baz bloody loves it when I get literary after dark. Whatever he might say to dispute it, he’s game for a bit of unlicensed midnight poetry.

“Got any spells in you, wizard?” I ask, sticking my chin out. “There’s still one thing left to do.”

His eyes follow mine.

_The sky. One last crucial task._

I can’t fly with my wings as they are, ripped and patched and battered. I kept threatening to sew them, but ever since I gave up the goat-face-stitching life, I haven’t been able to look a needle in the eye.

To get me off the ground again, Baz will cast several rounds of **_flying colours_**. So far, that’s the most reliable spell. There are a few other phrases in early experimental stages; sometimes they take, sometimes they don’t. I don’t mind being a project — it gives him something productive to focus on, seeing as he hasn’t yet shown an interest in revisiting the consumer spell trade. (At least he’s making potions again. That’s a start.) My wings give him somewhere to pour his magic, now that he has so much to spare.

The man’s a furnace of spells and furling energy, and I don’t know how it doesn’t drive him mad. When he casts on me...well, if I felt like that all the time, I’d go off. No doubt about it.

It’s a wonder _Baz_ doesn’t go off — that’d be a sight to see. (Like an Emotional Mudslide, but more explosive.) There’d probably be less of the dragon-fire and more outrageous bursts of glitter. Like somebody strolled into a storybook and started using passing faeries as maracas.

“I’ll reapply the spells,” he frowns, walking another lap around me. ( _Striding_ , really.) (His legs are fucking ridiculous.) My tail follows like a rat after a flashy piper, and ends up wrapped around my legs.

Not for the first time in the sorry saga that is my life, I end up in a heap on the floor.

“For Merlin’s sake, Snow! Pull yourself together.”

“It’s a conspiracy,” I mutter, prodding my tail. (It prods me back.) “You just can’t get the unwanted appendages these days.”

I’d ask him to spell it off, but it’s a good rudder when I’m skywards, trying to keep my balance. The bastard knows it’s indispensable and acts accordingly.

Baz rolls his eyes. “Are you quite finished? After the third **_flying colours_** , we’d best try an additional coating of **_high as a kite_**. Just to be sure. Your task will keep you up there for longer, and —”

“No!” I say quickly, shooting down _that_ idea before it takes flight. “Not after last time.”

I give him a moment to recall The Vaguely Upsetting Mistaken Kite Incident. Then, once the horror has faded from his face, we move swiftly along. (It’s for the best.) (I don’t think I can _ever_ go back to that particular village.)

“ ** _Fly off the handle_** is too volatile,” he muses, pulling his wand from his sleeve and tapping my nose with it. (Honestly, the things I put up with.) “But perhaps...after the fourth **_flying colours_** …”

It’s good, the way things are. It works. Baz worries that casting repeatedly on my wings makes his magic less effective, but I don’t think that’s true. He’s so powerful, he could cast the legs right off the castle, if he wanted to.

I haven’t breathed fire for a year. If it weren’t for the bloody lunatic tail and its quest for notoriety, some days I’d swear I’m back to normal. (Baz is sceptical. He reminds me on a daily basis that I’m the antithesis of normal. Also, what _is_ normal?) (He says if you look up the word _unusual_ in one of his fancy hardback dictionaries, there’s a wanted poster with my face on it.)

As for my tail...well, it knows when I’m having disloyal thoughts. I have to soothe it, promise I’d never be rid of it. I couldn’t live without it, really — not now, a year into its tyrannical rule.

I made peace with what I am a long time ago.

Baz’s magic makes more of what was left behind, when he sends me into the sky. I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of that feeling, when you’re standing on the edge and kick off into nothing. It’s a surge, a pull just behind my belly button — it twists up, then out through my chest and along my throat. Like the sky’s a magnet and I’m drawn to it, helplessly.

Sometimes I’m left wondering what I’d be good for without the dragon stuff, but we all have our place. I’m _definitely_ the only one who can fly, despite Shepard’s determination to seek out the secrets of life, death and the universe in his books. (He’s turning my old room at the farm into a library.) 

For a while I thought I could take care of the castle, find routine in the cobwebs that gather. But after my first foolhardy foray into feather-dusting, we quickly realised those _weren’t_ the avenues I was made to wander down. (And so began the Terrifying Gargoyle Revolt of Spring.) (There’s still a stone arrow sticking out of the wall that none of us can get out. It’s like a really shitty version of Excalibur.)

No, it’s better if I _don’t_ let my tail get within pummelling distance of a hammer. _The castle remembers. The floorboards will never forgive me._

Maybe I’m not destined to be useful, not in the way I’d like — and that’s alright.

My baking _is_ improving, thanks to Penny’s scarily thorough supervision. She comes to the workshop by the lake and talks me through all manner of tiny cakes. She’s now the manager at the bakery in the valley. A whisk-wielding dictator, with Kipling as her simpering sidekick.

I visit the farm sometimes to help with the goat stuff, but I can’t stay long. The last thing I need is Mrs Weatherly catching sight of me in the yard and enacting another hillside shoe beating.

No, I’m better off out here with the castle and the sea. Or in the valley with Baz, leaning in the workshop doorway as he casts weather spells over the lake. He’s always been good with fire, but he’s getting _really_ good with water, too. He summoned a gale one day, and the spray kicked up everywhere — we watched it fall, shattering like fractured starlight. I closed my eyes and pretended we were by the coast with waves kissing my cheeks; the next day, Baz uprooted the castle and pointed us north.

He’s a good one. He knows exactly what I need.

The castle walked that night until it ran out of land. It sleeps when we sleep, moves when Baz decrees it. It’s the best-behaved part of our living situation — the new design, _sans demon,_ means that travel now comes with zero flaming complaint.

I like it here, nestled in the hillside. Everywhere smells of sea, and I like how my skin feels at the end of the day. Like I’ve been sanded at the edges, rough and weather-worn. I lean up to kiss the salt off Baz’s mouth as we sway in the wind — I like the sting of it, this feeling of living at the edge.

He walks yet another dizzying circle around me, this time in the other direction. He’s got his wand at the ready, muttering magic under his breath. He strengthens the first **_flying colours_ ** with a **_wind beneath my wings_** _,_ and several instances of **_fly like the wind_**. Safe, foolproof spells that should see me well. I don’t feel any different, but I know it’s there — his magic’s a hum beneath my skin, ready to launch me into the ether.

It’ll last longer, I can feel it — I’ll go further than before.

“Baz, it feels good. I’m ready.”

I look up to see him smiling at me, and there’s hope hidden behind the silver.

“What?” I ask. He never stops worrying. My eyes fix on a piece of jewellery, silver against silver in the dip of his neck.

A necklace. A long chain weighed down with a teapot charm, etched and delicate.

We’ve all got one — me, Shepard, Penny. We sent one to Agatha in the post too, though scones only know if it was delivered. (And who’s to say she’d wear it? Agatha Wellbelove, ender of wars and the true anti-princess. Impossible to predict and impress.)

“Are you quite sure it needs to be today?” Baz asks, touching his teapot. “The wind’s high, and those clouds are angry enough to start a fight.”

I look up, past overcast grey. _It’s blue up there, somewhere. I just need to reach it._

“Don’t worry. I can handle a bit of dreariness.”

His mouth presses into a line. I’ll be in for it later; he hates when I take risks. Since Calcifer retired from permanent firelight duty, he’s had little attitude to put up with, and I think he’s losing his touch.

“Snow, we don’t yet know the limits of these new flight spells. Why don’t we hold off? We could move the castle further south — find somewhere with calmer weather.”

I tip my head to one side and attempt a smirk, the sort he dishes out on a daily basis. (I probably look like an idiot, but oh well. What’s that compared to my tatty wings and treacherous tail?) “You know I’m not mad about the sun, Baz. I burn like nobody’s business.”

“I’ve read the legends, Snow. Dragons don’t burn.”

It’s his turn to smirk and he’s much better at it. I give up while I’ve still got an ounce of pride to my name.

In days gone by, I would’ve picked a fight. Told him I wasn’t a dragon, that there was no place for them outside of myths. I know better now. When you’ve set fire to enough inanimate objects with your own face, it’s time to face the facts. With your face.

I take his hands and squeeze them once, twice. (The first to say _I’m here_. The second to say _I’m fine._ ) “It’ll be alright, Baz. Your spells won’t let me down.”

“They just did,” he grumbles, lifting his wand again. My tail flicks out to snatch it away, holding it high out of reach. “Give that back, you patchwork terror!”

“Calm down! I’m not going to fall into the sea, and if I do, you’ll fish me out.”

(I need to sound confident, so my wings don’t get other ideas. I’ve got no fucking clue how to swim, and I don’t think the ocean’s the best place to figure it out.)

“You _did_ fall,” he gasps, hair whipping across his face as the wind changes. “In a lumbering, lazy way, as you do everything else. It certainly _wasn’t_ flying.”

Another squeeze — I wrap my fingers in a lacy sleeve and give it a tug, for good measure. “Look, you’ve just coated me in enough spells to drown a dolphin. It’ll be good. If I feel any shudders, I’ll come down right away — when have I ever _not_ come down?”

He hesitates, tongue flicking out to touch his top lip. I lean in to see if I can catch a kiss before he’s back to scowling, but he’s too quick.

“You’re incorrigible. Not even the sky could be the end of you.”

I manage to drag a slightly more genuine smile from him, squeezing his fingers one more time. Then I step back and hold out my hand.

“Sweetheart,” I breathe, enjoying the way his ears turn pink. _Note to self: try that again later, when he’s in the bath and there’s nowhere to hide._ “Aren’t you forgetting something?”

He glances down, lashes low, and decides against further argument. (It must be fucking killing him.) Instead, he reaches inside a pocket and pulls out a teapot charm, identical to the one around his neck. My tail snatches it away without a hint of good graces — it’s a fair enough exchange, because it means he gets his wand back.

“Despicable protuberance,” Baz mutters. “Have you made no attempt to train it?”

I shrug. “It’s better to let it do as it pleases. It doesn’t take kindly to commands; I think its default state is mutiny.”

Baz steps back from the cliff’s edge and folds his arms. I tell him to go inside and warm up by the (very normal, untalkative) fire, but it’s clear he intends to stand here and wait until I’m done. Until I’ve come back down.

_I’ll always come down to you._

“Fly high, Snow,” he says, watching me with worry. (And wonder. There’s always a bit of that, these days.) “Find a place she’d like, and let her go.”

I smile, tears stinging my eyes. It’s sudden, and wholly unexpected. _When was the last time I cried? The night that the castle crumbled?_

_The night Baz died. Or...nearly died._

_There’s a lot about that night that’s not clear, even now._

“Yeah,” I say. “Yeah, she’d like it in the clouds. I’ll find the right place.”

That much _is_ clear.

_Ebb, I won’t stop until I’m there._

My tail curls protectively around the necklace. It’s the one Baz made for me; the one he gave to me on a rooftop as the sun went down. He spelled it from memory, charmed it like the others...

...and now, it has a job to do.

I smile at Baz, walking backwards towards the edge of the cliff. He watches me go, wand at his side in case anything goes wrong.

 _I am so grateful for you,_ I think, as the world turns to sky beneath my heels. _I love you so much._

_Ebb would have loved you, too._

Then, because I’m feeling dangerous and in the mood to show off, I step into nothing.

And I fall.

 _“Snow, you bloody_ —”

Baz’s words fade to nothing, and then the wind punches me like a fist, beating me down. I let it take me, over the edge towards the furious sway of white salt spray.

For a moment I’m there again, a year in the past. Trapped in a room choked with smoke, long corridors I was chased along. Tipping and tumbling, with a wizard in my arms. I still can’t face the thought of the Mage. His face as he fell from this world, into black.

 _Abomination,_ the soldiers said to me then. There’s so much of that time I can only face in brief pieces. Talking through it, finding endings in the madness.

But I no longer think that’s what I am.

I’m a dragon now; I was a dragon then.

I open my eyes as my wings unfurl.

Like that day at the palace, when I watched one man lose his magic and another lose his mind, my wings spread beneath me. Baz’s spells ignite, pulling me up and away from watery disaster.

 _There we are,_ I think, level with the cliff’s edge. I flash Baz a wink as I go soaring past, savouring the sneer. _There’s the magic._

He does _not_ look impressed. (I’m definitely in for a Wizard Pitch Classic Lecture Part 1 of 75,284 later.)

I fly above the castle, moving in a curving arc, taking in the turrets and crooked towers and imperfect brickwork. He remade it as it was before, as his mother designed it — black stone, stoic pillars and a gaggle of gargoyles crowing at me, as I loop over their heads.

It’s come far, from rubble and ruin. Everything he’d collected was lost in the Mage’s ambush, and the new-old rooms felt empty the first time we stepped inside. It was like passing through a ghost. He was exhausted after casting all day (week, month), so I took him straight to bed. It was only polite.

I remember what he said that first night as his mouth reached up for mine, my hands holding his wrists above his head.

_We’ll start again, Snow. Make something from nothing._

And we did. Everything we have now is our own.

The castle looks like it belongs, crouched in the long grass on the cliffs — there’s not another soul for miles around. We’ve been through many different kingdoms and unknown lands since it found its legs again last year, but this is the first place we’ve lingered in for long. It suits us. (Though Baz could talk the ears off a donkey about the tangles in his hair, if he spends too long outside.) (I really _am_ in for it later. Fucking hell.)

I think about home sometimes, in an abstract way. Lancs valley, streets walked so many times in my past life. (A few wistful recollections of drainpipes, traversed with a shimmy.)

But I can use the repaired castle door to visit the farm whenever I like, and I do. I’m never far from where I was.

Before I fly higher I see her there, standing on the drawbridge — Penny, still in her apron. She must’ve left work early. Raced up the hill in her motorcar and dived through the suspicious doorway in the kitchen, shouting at Gareth to be sure he doesn’t follow. (He’s too dim, honestly. He thinks it’s an extra convoluted pantry she spends hours in.) (It’s better if he doesn’t think about these things.)

I wave, and watch her bring a hand to her face. I think she’s trying to shout something — encouragement maybe, or constructive criticism. You can never be sure.

 _I’m glad you’re here,_ I think. _She’d want you to be part of this._

Penny takes everything in stride. When she first came through the door into the new castle, it was like she’d always been there, shouting at the star in the fireplace and poking Shepard with her wooden spoon. She was a pirate in a life before, I think.

She’s a speck beneath me now, faint and fading.

Everything’s tiny from up here. The cliffs, the castle, the shifting of the waves. It hardly looks real. The mist’s too low and unruly to see far inland, but you reach a town eventually. This far north they don’t know anything about the Mage or his pointless wars — the warplanes never flew this far. No doubt they’ve got their own worries to duel with.

Maybe we’ll get back to what things were, one day. After we’ve walked along every cliff and marched the castle across every border.

I’m not sure Baz is ready. I’m not sure _I’m_ ready.

It’s nice, this other road we’re on.

Maybe Baz will wake up next to me tomorrow and say, _Simon, I think we ought to unlock_ _the Saltnook door. Let Jaz Lavande resume his position as the coast’s principal peddler of menial magicks and trifling tricks._

It’s not a terrible idea. We’d be able to check in on the Wrinkly Potato Farmer formerly known as the Wraith, while we were there. By all accounts he’s occupying the pier down at the seafront, living on rat’s blood and running a penny arcade called Lost Vegas. (He never did get his taste for hearts back. Or arterial blood.) (He never got his magic back, either. I firmly believe that’s for the best; the scar on my neck stands as testament.)

I push these thoughts from my mind. _For now, I’ll fly._

My wings beat and bring me through the clouds I ransacked earlier. Higher still, into a sky that bleeds sapphire. It’s like a second sea; I roll onto my back and close my eyes, sun strong and air light. It’s like being burnt and frozen at the same time.

I feel a shine against my eyelids that’s brighter still.

_There’s only one being I know who would dare be this garish in daylight. Well, apart from Baz._

“Calcifer,” I breathe, little more than a whisper. “Don’t you have a chimney to haunt? We missed you this morning. Baz made pancakes and the frying pan didn’t insult him once.”

I feel a burn against my cheek.

_“I thought you could do with a hand, kid. Purely metaphorical, of course — let’s face it, I can’t offer much in the way of practical limbs.”_

I twist in the air, tail sliding around my waist. I feel the press of metal in my hand: the teapot necklace. _We kept it safe. We kept_ her _safe._

“How high can you go?”

The star crackles in my ear. _“Not even the birds can say. Why, are you looking for a race?”_

And it sounds mad, but it feels like I’ve enough energy to scorch the sky, so we _do_ race. Calcifer shoots along beside me, burning trails through the atmosphere, my wings making a blur of us both.

I hold my breath until we’ve exhausted ourselves, far enough out to have no inkling of land or where we were when we woke. (Do stars sleep, or is Calcifer a twenty-four seven malevolent presence?)

 _In, and breathe._ Watch birds swooping low over waves.

 _Out, and breathe._ Tip my head back to soak in forever.

 _“Is this the spot, kid?”_ Calcifer asks, a shimmer in the corner of my eye. His voice isn’t the rasp and crackle of fire these days _—_ it’s like new moonlight, teasing the wind. _“Would she like this? I never met her.”_

My tail uncurls, dropping the teapot necklace into my hand. I float in the clouds looking down at it, thinking.

Remembering.

_This is all that’s left of her. Ebb the goat farmer, Ebb the fromager. Ebb the hedge sorcerer — bloody kept that one quiet, didn’t she?_

_The very last drop of a person._

Still, it’s more than I thought I’d ever have again. More than I knew was left.

We didn’t go looking for it _—_ Baz asked many times if I wanted to find out about Ebb’s past, but it never seemed right. Then a month ago, a letter arrived at the cheese shop. Dropped on the doormat, addressed to _The Unregistered Potential Hatchling Living At [nondescript goat farm 001] On The Hill._

It’s lucky I was there that day, cloaked in spells _—_ I dread to think what would’ve happened if Gareth got his grubby mitts on it. (He turns a blind eye to my dragon tendencies. After a long day spent chasing goats around the yard, it’s too much for his tired mind to contemplate.)

I don’t know how the Post Office found me. I suppose a fair few guards _did_ see me in the palace last year, when I accidentally met with the Mage. (And ran. Ran as fast as I could.) The letter was apologetic _—_ it explained that the post-Mage council were working to clear the palace of his lingering stain. They’d stumbled upon something in the sprawling cellars built beneath the streets of the royal city.

Magic, or what was left of it. Stolen and hoarded. Shelves and crates and piles of it, stuffed into glass bottles.

Most of the bottles were empty or shattered. Leftovers from the day the Mage attacked Baz’s castle, drunk on the lives he’d ruined.

Under the palace...it was what remained of the Mage’s Reform, his plan to hoard and distribute magic like medicine. There’s nothing that could heal the rift, but at least the council’s trying. Piecing it together, tracking down the missing. The last scraps of a cruel plan that should never have been enacted.

The paper was wrapped around a bottle. Cracked, small, almost empty. A postscript at the end said _We have identified this magic as that of the former hedge sorcerer Ebeneza Petty. We are returning it to her last known address._

There wasn’t much else in the letter. She’d been registered once, long before I made my way up the hill. She traded healing spells in the valley, apparently. Then her registration expired one day, and she never renewed it.

I had no idea she was magic. Growing up, she never mentioned it. We never talked about wizards or myths...she chose the goats long before I got there, and never looked back.

I close my eyes and hold the necklace to my chest. _Ebb. We found you. Baz poured the last of you into my necklace, and we’ve been everywhere. Up and down and all over._

_Look how high we are._

I wonder how they identified her. Was it someone’s job to test the bottles, find out who was who? I hold the teapot to my nose and inhale _—_ freshly cut grass, spring breeze, and yes, the faint smell of goats and cheese. It’s Ebb as I remember her, and the tears are falling before I can help it _—_ Calcifer hovers below me, catching each one on a tongue made of meteor.

“I think this is it,” I say, when I’ve dried up. “I think this is the place.”

After Baz had read the letter fifty times and exhausted his varying opinions on the Post Office, he asked where I’d like to keep her. You know, in memoriam. I thought about getting a nice jar and displaying her in the cheese shop, but when Baz suggested a commemorative teapot, I had an idea.

I knew Ebb. I _know_ her. She liked being in the hills with her herd. I thought about leaving her there in the yard, so the kids could run all over her like they used to.

But then I thought about the sea, and how she once said she’d never been. She’d never stood on a clifftop and watched the waves swirl. _If I ever get meself to a beach, lad, don’t expect to see me come back ‘ere. You’d better get them kids in line, yer hear?_

She’d love the sea. So I thought, why _shouldn’t_ she get to see it? Just once. Now that everything is over, and I’ve finally found my (un)fair answers.

This is all that’s left of Ebb. The Mage took her magic, and on the day he attacked the castle, he drained her memory to spite me.

When I looked, I found there _was_ something left in the bottle. A single teardrop.

A tiny piece of who she was, hanging above the sea with me.

 _“Is it time?”_ Calcifer asks, trailing stardust as he crackles. He’s spectacular _—_ a sight for sorest eyes. _“I had a bright idea on the way up here. Well, all of my ideas are bright — it comes with the celestial territory. Want to hear it?”_

“Is it a nice idea, or does it involve dismemberment?”

_“It’s a lovely idea. Highly appropriate. Here — hold the necklace up, kid. I’ll give it some welly.”_

My wings shift to hold me in place, legs dangling over the ocean so it looks like I’m treading water. (Good thing I tied my shoelaces properly this morning. Baz would _not_ be happy about taking me to a shoe shop again.) (Last time we went in disguise and my tail showed up uninvited. Scared the beans out of the poor assistant.)

I think Calcifer’s saying something, but I can’t be sure. It sounds like hope ground into dust.

Then the teapot's hot in my hand, white with fire, and I feel a different sort of magic move through me. Spells that don’t need to be spoken, old as the stars themselves.

This magic is mine, Baz’s, Ebb’s, Calcifer’s. It’s everything.

_“Let’s go, Simon. Fly as fast as we can. Have you seen that horizon lately? I haven’t. If you ask me, there’s no end in sight.”_

I grin as we turn to face infinity.

We shoot across the sky, two amateur stars in flight _—_ and I spill the last of Ebb’s magic into the sea as we go.

  
  


* * *

  
  


Later, when the clouds sit low in the sky, my feet find land again. I drag myself across the drawbridge to the castle, shoulders slumped and aching.

_“Lavender — that’s what you need, kid. A nice lavender bath. Ask your wizard politely and he might let you fiddle with his potions.”_

I turn to glare at Calcifer as he hovers behind me.

“Not bloody likely. Last time I touched his face cream, he spelled one of my eyebrows off. Only _one_ of them, mind.”

Calcifer fizzles. _“You looked beautiful, Simon.”_

“Piss off.”

He watches me open the door, flickering wickedly. Then he ruins the moment by saying something nice.

_“You did good today, kid. Your soppy goat farmer would’ve been proud.”_

Ebb’s free now. For a day, she was a shooting star.

Calcifer’s right. I don’t regret a single ache or bruise.

(Regrettably, he sees as such in my face and fucking _winks_ at me, before flying up and out of sight.) (I ask where he’s going and he says he’s in the mood to clog a chimney.) (You can take the demon out of the fireplace, but…)

“Simon! Are you going to come inside and warm up, or dither out here until your bits fall off? Either way, I’m not standing around to bear witness. I need to get back to the farm before Gareth drives the business into ruin.”

Penny’s in the doorway, flour all over her knees. (She’s at least half a cake, at all times.) As I brush past her she squeezes my arm _—_ I’m no longer scaly but still pockmarked in places. If she’s not careful, she’ll graze the skin off her fingers.

“Did it go well?” she murmurs. “In the sky with Ebb.”

“Yeah,” I reply, closing the door behind us gently. “It was good. It’s done.”

She might want to talk about it later, she might not. Neither of us push these things.

_The words’ll come when they want to, lad, and leave when it’s time. It’s like waiting fer a trolley bus — just when you’ve given up, ten come along at once. The words know better than we do._

I laugh, sharp and sudden. Memories, as bitter as they are sweet.

I follow Penny up the stone steps into the castle’s kitchen, and let the day drain away from me gradually.

_Everything’s as it should be._

Penny marches to the fireplace; Shepard’s cooking a pan of eggs and bacon over a very cooperative fire. (There are loud complaints echoing from the chimney, but he’s pretending not to notice.)

I look around. There’s no spaniel sitting atop a throne of hardbacks and no customers banging at the door, but there _is_ a wizard by the table, poring over a piece of paper.

My heart stutters. It does that, when I see Baz. When I’ve just about got the grey of his eyes out of my head, and the scent of whichever florist he murdered for their aftershave out of my memory. It rushes back, all at once _—_ like my skeleton’s trying to do a cartwheel without informing the rest of me.

Love. That’s what you call it.

 _Fucking embarrassing_ is another solid name.

Baz looks up from his letter _—_ as I approach I see wonky capitals, a classic sign of the royal city’s careless penmanship. He smiles at me softly, eyes asking what his mouth dares not.

I hold up my teapot necklace. The spout tips back but there’s no whistle, no precious jewel inside to swoon over. No last vestiges of a person once loved.

It’s empty.

I drop the necklace onto the table.

“All’s well, Snow?” he asks. (His mouth moves, but let’s be honest, his eyebrows do most of the talking.)

I feel the tension leave me, my face relaxing for the first time since I woke this morning. _The heart’s burden rests a little lighter._

“Yeah. Everything’s great.”

And it is.

(When it isn’t, it will be.)

I slide into the chair next to him, half-listening to Penny and Shepard as they argue over the frying pan. She seems to have forgotten about her pressing business at the farm; Shepard has that effect on her focus.

“Surrender the spatula, _apprentice_. I need to be home before dark _—_ you’re about as efficient as a motorcar with two wheels.”

“They have those now, haven’t you seen?” Shepard gestures excitedly, conducting their conversation with a greasy spoon. “In the royal city of Om _—”_

“If I wanted gratuitous exposition, I’d bloody well ask for it.”

Calcifer’s doing his best to invade the chimney, though his shimmying techniques aren’t quite up to par. It sounds like he’s stuck halfway down. I smirk, leaning into Baz _—_ he makes a grab for my hand, pulling it into his lap. His fingers are no longer loaded with rings _—_ I stroke the skin from nail to knuckle.

“Should we help? He _was_ nice, earlier. He let me win a race.”

“Absolutely not,” Baz sneers, lip curling. “Let the detestable space speck solve his own problems. Merlin knows he loves to create them.”

I let my eyes drift across his nose and over the curve of his mouth. I shift in my seat so I can kiss his cheek without my wings sawing his head off, just as he turns to catch _me_ in a proper kiss. We stay like that, wholly improper at the breakfast table, until my tail interrupts us by poking me in the side.

“Favouritism,” I mutter, swiping at air. (The bastard’s a quick one.) “It never goes for _you_ , do you notice? Only me.”

“I suspect it knows which side its bread is buttered,” Baz says, folding the letter he was reading and slipping it inside his shirt. (He thinks that’ll stop me from asking about it. He’s wrong. He should know by now that I’m a fiend for other people’s post.) (My tail shows a shred of loyalty by snaking over his shoulder, beginning our covert retrieval mission.)

“Speaking of butter,” I say, because that is generally what I like to do. Speak about butter. “Do we have any? Bacon should have butter on it; it’s only right.”

Baz scowls at me, firing off an order to Shepard that involves the words _absolutely under no circumstances_ and _over my dead body,_ which our plucky apprentice gleefully disregards. 

The hallowed butter dish is placed on the table within easy reach of all limbs I currently possess. _Excellent._

“This is _not_ an opportunity for you to indulge in _direct dipping_ , Snow.”

He swats at my marauding fingers. (No claws, but they’re still a threat to any respectable dinner table.) My tail dips its spade sneakily inside his shirt. _That’ll teach you to go about neglecting your top button so brazenly. Not that I’m complaining._

Shepard approaches with the frying pan, and gives me a thumbs up.

“Cheers,” I say, ignoring Penny as she gives up the fight for kitchen seniority and marches towards the castle door, asking to be let out.

“I’ll see you in the morning, Simon,” she calls, pulling up her socks. “We’re cleaning out the barn, remember? Put your wellies on. And you,” she threatens, waving a finger at Shepard. “You’ll be there too, or I’m retracting every quote I gave you for your silly little book.”

“Sure thing!” Shepard says cheerfully. Work on Shepard’s Optimistic Encyclopaedia of _Fascinating_ Magickal Creatures, Version II is going well _—_ he’s nearly finished the first draft. He looks at Penny with utter joy in his eyes, a fool besotted with a tempest. He’s still officially staying in my old room at the farm, though I don’t know if he’s really staying _in_ the room, if you know what I mean. (Do _I_ know what I mean?) “I’ll be there after bacon o’clock.”

Penny tries to look furious. (She’s delighted.)

“Basilton, will you be useful and open the door?”

Baz sighs but knows better than to argue. His wand flicks at the dial _—_ **_“Don’t bet the farm on it.”_ **

The dial spins like old times, though it’s mainly for effect. It settles on a scratchy pencil drawing of a goat _—_ the tail’s hard work, not mine _—_ and the door beneath flies open.

“See you tomorrow, Pen,” I call. She gives me one last hopeful smile.

“Yes, Simon. And well done today, really.”

Then she’s gone and the door’s closing again, the sight of the Fromagerie’s kitchen disappearing into dark. Shepard flops into a chair at the table, sharing bacon and eggs between our plates, and announces that _it’s just not bacon without butter._

“It is though, isn’t it?” Baz mutters, catching my tail mid-pocket raid, and thwarting the attempt to steal his letter. The chastened tail curls over the back of my chair, suitably ashamed. “That’s _exactly_ what bacon is without butter. Perfectly serviceable, unspoilt _bacon.”_

I suspend The Endless Buttered Bacon Debate and file it away for a future time, when the weather’s bad and I’ve driven us both to boredom. Baz’s top secret letter definitely seems like a priority right now, and with Shepard settling in to complete our family tableau, we have a fighting chance of getting the truth out of him. 

Ideally, Calcifer’s the one to pit against Baz in an argument; his wit is _stellar._ He’s no use stuck in the chimney, though _—_ once, he got himself trapped in the bathroom pipes. I turned on the hot tap and screamed for an exorcist.

We eat quietly for a while. (Alright, a minute.) Then Baz slams down his knife and fork, making the salt shaker rattle.

“Are you determined to stare at me until I reveal the contents of my private correspondence? It’s addressed to _me,_ Snow. Not the entire bloody clifftop.”

“But you’re scared of the postman,” I say despondently.

He relents either because he loves me, or because I’m being pathetic. Who can say?

Shepard peppers a smile onto his fried egg, then takes a hearty bite. “It _is_ strange that you got a letter, Baz. I’d understand if the postman left it at one of the boarded-up shops, in a moment of foolish hope _—_ but how does the council know you’ve even _been_ to the farm?”

My head snaps up. “The council wrote to you at the farm? So it _is_ from them?”

I’m halfway out of my chair, flailing like a mad thing. _Conscription. Registry. Nasty invitations._ Baz holds me off with one hand, threatening me with a good cursing. He then slides the mysterious letter out of his pocket and smacks me on the nose with it.

“Petulant snake, do I need to spell you into a scarecrow again?”

I scowl. “You wouldn’t bloody dare.”

“Try me.” He frowns expertly until I back off, tail twisting to pat me consolingly on the back. “I think I’ll charm a turnip for your head.”

“I daresay it’s easier to spill, Baz. You know what Simon’s like once he’s got a single thought on the go _—_ there’s no room for anything else. Not even butter.”

I nod, then realise I’m possibly being insulted. _Shepard, not you too. You’re the good one._ (He smiles at Baz and me, then finally at the bacon. The man’s a bloody enigma.)

By the time Baz has met his personal drama quota, smoothing the letter out laboriously on the tablecloth, I’ve mashed down another three rashers. (Crispy but not burnt. Shepard did a bang-up job.)

“Shit capital letters,” I say, once my mouth’s no longer full. “It _is_ the council.”

I feel alarm rush through me, and a splash of anger, too. _There’s no way they found the new castle — we haven’t been anywhere_ near _the kingdom for months. We’ve had no slimy, frilly guests to ensnare us with hexed jewellery…who could have known?_

“It is _not_ from the council,” Baz says, stacking his half-empty plate on top of mine. (Rude. Does an empty plate automatically mean I’ve finished? Does he think I don’t have it in me to destroy every last crumb left on _his_ plate? Does he know me _at all?_ ) “Rather, it is from a certain non-princess of a kingdom to the east of our own, deigning to reply to one of Bunce’s innumerable insufferable missives. I suspect the _shit capital letters,_ as you so graciously described them, are her idea of a little joke. She sent us a parcel of some sort, too _—_ it’s over there, propped up by the fireplace.”

Shepard makes a delighted sound and reaches for the letter, but Baz snatches it away again. (Drama. He’s living it. At all times.)

“Agatha replied?” Shepard asks, hands raised in victory. “She _replied!_ Oh, Penelope is going to be so happy. And even better, I’m down ten coins! We had a bet going. I thought Agatha was _never_ going to reply.”

“Wait, you _lost_ money?” I ask, confused. “Why are you happy about it?”

Shepard grins, tapping the table. “Because Penny’s going to be thrilled. Why _wouldn’t_ that make me happy?”

_He truly is too good for this world._

“Wasteful gambling habits aside,” Baz sneers, hands steepled under his chin. “It seems that Wellbelove _has_ relented, thus confirming my suspicion that even the hardiest soul has its limits.”

“Yeah,” I grunt, clearing Baz’s plate. “Penny. She’s the limit.”

Shepard stands. “She _did_ send twenty letters a week. Agatha was probably running out of room to keep them.”

“Wellbelove is a _princess,”_ Baz despairs. “She’s likely got entire rooms in her parent’s palace, purely to hide the post in.”

“You know that’s not normal, right?” I ask. “Most people open their letters, Baz, then they move on. Both emotionally and communicatively.”

His eyes narrow. “Big words, Snow. Been reading the thesaurus again, have you?”

I shrug. “What can I say? It’s a prepossessing tome.”

_Eye roll, meet the past tense. You’ll find many more of your kind here._

“Maybe Agatha _wanted_ to write back,” Shepard reasons. Nothing can get between this man and baseless optimism. “I can’t wait to tell Penny. News this good might get me out of goat duty.”

_Oh, you sweet naive soul. You were doomed the moment she first passed you a rake._

We haven’t seen Agatha since she went home to end the Mage’s war. She’s visited the royal city only once since, as part of a diplomatic conference _—_ a make-nice after all the bombs were dropped. _Sign a bit of paper and forget about it. Now, isn’t that progress?_

I didn’t think she’d remember us. I thought she’d go home and never look back. Maybe suffer a rogue ear scratch in the middle of the night and hire a passing hedge sorcerer to curse us.

But she remembered the farm. She knew a letter addressed to Baz would reach him there, and it did.

“Is she alright?” I ask, wiping my fingers on the tablecloth, much to his disgust. (Like I said, I’m already in it for it later. Might as well seal my fate.) “Agatha hasn’t been cursed again, has she?”

The Princess Wellbelove, also known as No Wait Summer Don’t Bite Me There!, can handle a curse better than any of us. She spent months trapped as a spaniel, though I’m sure she’d rather _not_ revisit that particular ~~tail~~ tale again.

“No curses,” Baz says, placing the letter flat on the table. “Or at least, none that I can discern. We might, of course, consider _any_ sort of written communication a curse.”

I roll my eyes. Shepard returns from the sink, sitting down as Baz begins to read aloud.

“TO THE WIZARD BONLISAT PITCH _— really,_ Wellbelove? Was that necessary? _—_

YOU AND THE SOCIETAL CURIOSITIES YOU CONSIDER “FRIENDS”  
ARE HEREBY INVITED TO ATTEND THE BIRTHDAY PARTY  
OF ONE H.R.H. AGATHA W., WHO IS DEFINITELY _NOT_ TO BE ADDRESSED AS  
“PRINCESS” OR “SUMMER” UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES.  
  
THE AFOREMENTIONED PARTY WILL BE HELD  
AT HER ROYAL ABODE, IN THE KINGDOM OF WELLBELOVE.

THIS TIRESOME EVENT WILL BE CONDUCTED ON TUESDAY-NEXT.  
DO NOT BRING ANY STRANGE PRESENTS, DOG-EARED BOOKS OR EXPLOSIVES;  
YOU WILL BE CHASED OFF THE PREMISES BY THE ROYAL HOUNDS.  
(BLOODHOUNDS. NOT SPANIELS.)

YOU CANNOT POSSIBLY MISPLACE THE CASTLE.  
IT’S MUCH BIGGER THAN _YOUR_ CASTLE, AND IT’S LOCATED IN CASTLE SQUARE.

KINDLY REPLY TO THIS LETTER **ONCE** **(!!!!!)** TO CONFIRM YOUR ATTENDANCE.  
DO NOT ALLOW PENELOPE BUNCE TO AUTHOR SAID REPLY.

IF YOU ARE UNABLE OR UNWILLING TO ATTEND,  
PLEASE FEED THIS INVITATION TO A PASSING FIRE DEMON.

YOURS IN GREAT RELUCTANCE,  
WITH THE REQUISITE AMOUNT OF MANNERS,

AGATHA W.

ps. This party constitutes an important diplomatic outreach between my kingdom and yours.  
Every wizard is invited, and it is extremely mandatory. See you there. (Unfortunately.)

pps. Open the parcel. You may enlist the aid of one declawed creature in this endeavour.”

_Well, I suppose that means me._

Baz turns the letter so we can see how she’s signed it _—_ with a flourish, a squiggle, and a sarcastic muddy paw print. I get up and hobble to the fireplace to fetch the parcel _—_ it’s big and rectangular, wrapped in brown paper. I wonder what’s in it.

“Astounding sense of humour,” Shepard says with a wry grin, clapping. “You can’t say she’s not able to laugh at herself.”

“BONLISAT,” I repeat, just for the sake of watching Baz’s face crease again. _Don’t worry, I’ll kiss the disdain away later._ “Will anyone ever get it right? Letters aren’t binding if they’re misspelt.”

Bonlisat tries to bat me with the offending page, but I’m already swerving, wings steering me away from a dance with a paper cut. I slide the parcel onto the table, looking at him hopefully. _I love presents. Can we open it? Why haven’t we opened it yet?_

“Are we going?” Shepard asks, positively sparkling. “A mandatory royal party...that sounds like fun! Next Tuesday...Penny could hand the reins to Kipling, and we can ask Gareth to look after the cheese shop. We could all go together.”

Baz says nothing. I curl a finger under the paper and tear off a sneaky corner to see if it inspires anything. Shepard presses on, determined to wear us down slowly, like waves battering against old cliffs.

“I’m sure we could find time. It’d be nice to see a new kingdom! A change from all this wind and sea.”

I half-listen, giving up on the parcel as they dispute the details. I limp across the castle’s stones and lift myself on my wings whilst there’s a scrap of magic still in them. I peer from high windows at the coast line, a jagged dash across the centre of everything.

_The wind and sea._

_Wherever we go next, it comes with me._

_I’ll keep you with me._

“What do you think, Snow?” asks a soft voice, as I lower myself to the floor.

I turn to see Baz, shy in the light coming through the window. He’s holding my necklace. I bow my head and let him slip the chain over my neck.

There’s something else held against his chest. It looks like the back of a painting _—_ he must have opened the parcel while I was distracted by the sea. He turns it in his hands so I can see a face I’ve seen once before. (Twice, actually. The palace and the balcony.) (And in some ways, I see her every single day when I look at Baz.)

Natasha. The portrait that was hanging in the Mage’s gallery, on that difficult day a year ago. My stomach twists as I stare at her, grey eyes and a dark blue dress. Olive skin, long black hair, the silver charm around her neck. I look up at Baz to see him blinking away tears.

“There was a note,” he says, throat tight. He passes me a slip of thick paper, embossed with the Wellbelove royal crest. “I’m afraid we’re going to have to buy Her Highness a very nice present.”

I look down at the words in my hand.

“ppps. This portrait was delivered to me by your kingdom’s council, following the removal of the Mage’s belongings. I believe this to be in error — she surely belongs in _your_ castle, not mine. Even though it is _my_ birthday that approaches, I send this painting to you and ask that you place her somewhere warm and pleasant, by the fireplace.”

_Oh. Oh, Agatha. Thank you._

Baz takes a moment to compose himself, leaning his mother’s portrait against the wall and pocketing Agatha’s note.

Behind him Shepard’s a man possessed, hashing out an itinerary of things to see and do whilst in the kingdom of Wellbelove, even though he’s never been before. (He’s making a separate list of magickal creatures he hopes to interview for his research.) ( _Resentful cursed dogs_ are at the top of the list.)

“Do _you_ want to go?” I ask, and I know that by _you_ he’ll understand I mean _us_. Me and him and the castle. Shepard, Penny, any unfortunate magicked beings we might pick up along the way. This world of ours that we’ve made our own. “We don’t have to go back yet, Baz. Back to the world.” _Not if you don’t want to. I’ve grown to like running, when it’s with you._

He moves to me, and even though my hands are still a bit damp with mid-bacon enthusiasm he takes them in his own, kissing across my wrists.

“As ever, Simon Snow, I’m ready when you are. I go where you go.”

I pull him into a hug that’s crushing, the sort that’s more painful than anything else. But he doesn’t pull away or smack me with the nearest dense object, so I hold on tight, kissing his neck.

“The road,” I say, gesturing towards the windows. My eyes flick down to Natasha’s portrait. _By the fire...that seems right. I think that’s the place._ “It comes back here, doesn’t it? We can always come back.”

He nods, looping his arms over my shoulders. I can smell his magic _—_ smoky, since it was remade last year. I like to think that’s a remnant of me, wrapped around his heart.

I wonder if we’ll go through the other door later _—_ the one that leads to the lake.

We go there at night sometimes, to see the stars. I bake bread and we eat it hot from the oven, feet dangling in the water. Last time we were there Baz cast a spell from the day we met. We walked above the lake, stars trapped as reflections beneath our drifting feet.

“Of course we can come back, Simon.”

I lean up for another kiss, love passed between us like whispers. A sweetness of magic that removes us from time.

Well, _nearly._ It’s hard to feel completely removed when Shepard’s chattering to himself in the background, taking travel arrangements far too personally. I think he misses having Calcifer to talk to at all hours of the day. 

“We could always open a door?” he calls, gesturing to the somewhat obsolete dial. “If Baz wants to, that is.”

We stare up at it. The symbols aren’t the same, since the castle was rebuilt. There’s no star door, and the shops in Lancs, Saltnook and Omaha are still sealed, unused since their “owners” retired. The door only takes us to two places now, apart from here _—_ the farm, and the lake in the valley.

“No,” he says quietly, shaking his head. “I don’t think there’s any need for that.”

 _That’s it then,_ I think. _No party. Sorry, Shepard._

He rubs his face and carries on.

“Does Wellbelove’s kingdom have adequate space for a castle to nest in, for a day or two?”

Eyebrow up, plan creaking into action. My heart soars.

_I’m absolutely mad about this man. Glitter for brains, cunning for heart._

“Are you _—_ ” Shepard begins, staggering to a chair. “Baz, are you serious? You want to go to a _party_?”

“We’re going,” I say, before he can change his mind. _We’ll run far and further. That’s what I promised Ebb._ “It’s mandatory.”

“If you walk the castle across five kingdoms again, you’ll make headlines,” Shepard points out, in a rare display of negativity. (I don’t like it. Turn that frown around immediately.) “They’ll think you’re _back_. The wizard Pitch, roaming the land for hearts-over-easy.”

_Ah, yes. A legend come to life._

Well, there _was_ a bit of truth in it, in the end.

He stole my heart and I never want it back.

“Who said anything about _walking?_ ” Baz asks, sauntering towards the stairs. The way he looks at me suggests I should follow.

Before we get too far there’s a great racket of coughs and splutters, and a cloud of smoke comes pouring from the chimney above the fireplace.

“Oh!” Shepard says, struggling with the need to be cheerful while dying inside. “Soot, in the kitchen! What a fascinating turn of events.”

The dingy monstrosity rolls around, ending up at my feet in a great wheezing mess. Silver cracks through, and there are two shards of light that might be eyes blinking up at us.

“Calcifer,” Baz says calmly, one foot on the stairs. “I’m afraid you’re too late for bacon rind.”

 _“You splendiferous stain,”_ the star croaks, flailing helplessly on the floor. _“Don’t tell me you couldn’t hear me rattling around the pipes! It’s heartless of you to let me suffer so. I thought we were past all that.”_

Baz blinks once, thoroughly unimpressed. “Where were you, lost in the Spirit World? You look like a sootball, dear cosmic calamity.”

_“And you look like your foot grew a face, and then—”_

Baz turns, starting up the stairs. “I _look_ like a wizard in need of a three-hour bath. I just made a life-altering decision, Calcifer _—_ it was exhausting _._ Snow, are you coming? Or are you going to stare at my arse all day?”

What kind of choice is _that?_

 _I_ am _going to follow you upstairs and I_ am _going to stare at your arse._

(When I said earlier that I’m in for it, I didn’t mean it as a bad thing.) (I mean I’m _in_ for it, if you know what I mean.) (In for _it._ In the bath.)

_“That’s right, wizard. Wash away your sins.”_

“Calcifer, I’m too tired to cast. Be a dear and move the castle, will you? For old time’s sake. A mere three hundred miles to the south should suffice; look for the land with a nationwide ban on talking dog jokes.”

We ignore the star’s howling as we traverse the staircase, climbing a spiral towards the first floor and bathroom, where my soapy destiny awaits.

I’ve got a foot in the doorway when I feel it, the ground beneath us beginning to stir.

Before Baz can become enamoured with his potions, I take his hand and pull him over to a door. The one that leads to a balcony built straight from memory.

Outside, the wind nearly knocks us over _—_ I spread my wings and let my tail secure us against the railing, winding around the backs of our legs. (It’s always in a helpful mood when Baz is involved. The fucker would elope with him, if it wasn’t permanently stuck to my back.)

“One last look at the sea,” I say, though really, I enjoy everything about this part.

The castle rises from the hillside, spidery legs stretching and uncurling.

Above us, we see a spark still shedding soot _—_ Calcifer whipping around our heads, spraying walls and spires and bickering gargoyles with blackened star-shine.

“Calcifer!” I shout, hoping he can hear me. “I like your spark!”

On the wind, carried down to us with the tiniest shred of spite, comes an aching sigh.

_“Take to the skies, kid. Don’t look down.”_

I remember sitting with Baz on a rooftop, what feels like a lifetime ago. What was the spell he cast to take us there?

**_“I’ll build you a castle in the sky.”_ **

I turn to watch him whisper it again, wand in hand.

His arm slides around me and I lean into it, into _him,_ and let the wind take us where it will.

The road brought us here, and now it twists elsewhere.

The castle lifts itself from the ground on wings of quicksilver, the star vanishing through a window high above, his hard work done for the day.

It’s magic, every inch and strip of mortar. Baz’s magic, and his mother’s. Comets and dust. An addition I talked him into making when he rebuilt the castle, brick by brick.

This is ours now. Curses undone and spells remade.

It’s what we were and all we will be.

We lift into the sky and begin our long journey south, the sea disappearing behind us. I search the clouds for a last glance of magic, dissipating into a darkening sky.

_Rest. I hope you found it, Ebb._

_I hope you like the sea._

Baz and I leave the balcony, reentering the castle’s warmth as it rocks beneath us. It feels like we’re on a ship, though the waves crest as wind, instead of water.

Baz runs his (our) bath and I linger in the doorway, fingers closing around my teapot necklace one last time before I slip the chain over my neck and undress.

There was a time I thought I’d never fly again, but I do. I do fly, sometimes.

There was a time when I didn’t know magic could bring anything but bad luck.

I go to Baz and remove his necklace. I begin untying the laces that cross his wrists and arms.

Later, we’ll slip downstairs to hang a portrait. Afterwards we’ll return to the balcony, and watch the world pass by beneath us. Kingdoms we don’t know, countless lives we’ll never fathom. We’ll bicker with a star until the night sky is busy with them, and he goes off to deal with brighter things.

We’ll be alone, quite alone, and we’ll sink into it.

_I’ve not been alone since the moment we met in that alleyway. Since I fell through time to find you._

_Since you heard me, and found me again. Since I never let go._

I’ll tell Baz how I once believed that castles couldn’t move, and he’ll say _but my love, did you know they could fly?_

We’ll fall asleep in a nest built of magic and memory,

and we’ll wake up in a castle in the sky.


End file.
